


Sea Lion Woman

by elicitillicit



Series: Paint it Black [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, because regulily is impt lbr, molly isn't a prude here i know but keep in mind that this molly went to college ok, there had to be regulily in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5473058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elicitillicit/pseuds/elicitillicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ted pretty much heaves her out of the cab and carries her two steps up the walk to her apartment before halting abruptly. </p><p>- Get your hands off her, the fuck - an uncomfortably familiar voice is shouting, and Ted is jostled aside and another pair of hands grabs her shoulders and shakes her - </p><p>Andromeda glances up blearily, and immediately regrets it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Lion Woman

1700h -  _andy_    
1701h -  _andromeda_  
1701h -  _emergency_  
1701h -  _code red_  
1702h -  _heart attack_  
1702h -  _spanish armada_  
1702h -  _taking your finals but youre butt naked_  
1705h -  **???????**    
1705h -  **What’s up**  
1707h -  _i cant be your maid of honour_  
1708h -  **WHAT**  
1709h -  _im not a maid_  
1710h -  **???? I KNOW THAT**  
1710h -  **Molly please it’s not like you’re QUIET**  
1711h -  **And it’s not like a literal requirement**  
1712h -  **You don’t actually have to be a virgin to hold my flowers**  
1713h -  _ok but im not done with my news yet_  
1714h -  _i can be your MATRON of honour_    
1715h -  **?????**  
1715h -  **Weren’t you supposed to get married next year or something**  
1716h -  **After your dad cow-proofs the farmhouse**  
1717h -  _yeah change of plans_    
1718h -  _we’re getting married in a week haha SURPRISE_  
1719h -  **But**  
1719h -  **OH**  
1720h -  **OH MY GOD**  
1721h -  **MOLLY PREWETT**  
1721h -  _yeah_    
1722h -  **OH MY FUCKING GOD**  
1723h -  _abstinence really is the best method of birth control tbh_  
1723h -  **CONGRATULATIONS?????????**  
1724h -  **OMG MOLLY I’M SO EXCITED**  
1725h -  _yeah me too but like_  
1726h -  _tell ted to never listen to arthur regarding condom brands ok_  

* * *

 

Molly Prewett and Arthur Weasley get married in a tiny church (the only one they could get at the last minute) that  _overflows_ with a thousand relatives Molly’s  _massive_ dairy-farming clan up in Wisconsin and another thousand cousins from up from Kentucky, where Arthur’s family’s bourbon distillery is located, and about five hundred relatives of questionable relation to either side hailing from Idaho. 

Andromeda finds herself flat against a wall at the reception, drinking cheap bubbly and wondering if there have been this many redheads in a room since  _Braveheart_. Ted sidles up beside her, trying to look inconspicuous and failing miserably. 

“Promise me that there won’t be this many people at our wedding?” she pleads. 

Ted chuckles and swaps her glass of bubbly out for a slightly more drinkable red wine. “We’re already not inviting anyone from your side of the family. That’s already about fifty people gone.” 

Andromeda laughs, and takes a sip of her wine, but it curdles in her belly. 

Ted sees the expression on her face and grimaces. “Let’s not discuss your family,” he suggests, and leads her out onto the dance floor, where they attempt to dance but end up just swaying awkwardly on the spot whilst trying to avoid Molly’s brothers’ incredibly enthusiastic interpretation of the Macarena. 

“Remind me to keep my family small,” Molly mutters to her quietly a little later, as Andromeda tries and fails to scrub the image of Arthur’s seven very drunk great-uncles simultaneously dropping their pants. 

“Cousins are the  _worst_ ,” she agrees cheerfully, and takes another swig from an even less agreeable bottle of beer. “Want to go see how many slices of cake we can steal off people’s plates before they find out?” 

Even later: Ted pretty much heaves her out of the cab and carries her two steps up the walk to her apartment before halting abruptly. 

-  _Get your hands_ off  _her, the fuck_  - an uncomfortably familiar voice is shouting, and Ted is jostled aside and another pair of hands grabs her shoulders and shakes her - 

Andromeda glances up blearily, and immediately regrets it. 

“Sirius?” she gasps, right before throwing up all over her cousin’s fancy-ass Calvin Klein muscle tee. 

She doesn’t know who catches her right before she hits the pavement. 

* * *

 

1603h -  **Molly**  
1603h -  **I know you’re on your honeymoon**  
1604h -  **But given that i know that your honeymoon is pretty much just you shacking up with arthur 24/7**  
1604h -  **IRRESPONSIBLY BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE A BUN IN THE OVEN**  
1604h -  **But anyways**  
1604h - **I need a massive favour**  
1608h - _andy you are the rudest person ever_    
1608h -  _i’m never telling you about my sex life ever again_  
1609h -  _what is this favour_  
1610h -  **Do you remember my cousin sirius**  
1611h -  _no_    
1612h -  **The older one**    
1613h -  **Not the prefect**  
1613h -  _yes i rmb him but no_  
1613h -  **He’s in town and my apartment couch is too small  
** 1613h -  _no_  
1614h -  **Mollyyyyyyyyyyy  
** 1615h - andyyyyyyyyyy  
1615h -  **He promised to behave himself**  
1615h -  _sirius black is a menace to society_  
1616h -  **That’s true but he’s also a homeless menace**  
1617h -  _blood is thicker than water  
_ 1617h -  _you keep him_  
1618h -  **???**  
1619h -  **The actual idiom is ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’**  
1620h -  _ily we’ll catch up when i’m tired of having sex instead of going to work_  
1621h -  **Molly?**  
1626h -  **MOLLY?**    
1627h -  **Ugh this is how it begins**

* * *

 

Sirius, it appears, has been disinherited, and since the concept of  _saving for a rainy day_ is apparently genetically incompatible with her family's DNA, he’s also completely broke, and therefore entirely reliant on her to provide shelter. 

Andromeda  _could_ turn him out into a YMCA, but she also is aware that to Sirius, that would be the equivalent of a very slow death by exposure to the masses. 

She isn’t kidding when she says that her apartment - and therefore her apartment’s couch - is too small to fit her six-foot-two former linebacker cousin, so Ted graciously badgers his uChicago juniors for an extra mattress and lugs it up three flights of stairs into her living room. 

Ted then patiently walks Sirius through the mechanics of using a washing machine whilst Andromeda patches a furious phone call through to Regulus. 

“He’s  _here_ , by the way, thanks for  _not checking up_ on your  _only sibling_ ,” she hisses, and she can  _hear_ her cousin rolling his eyes. 

“You have absolutely  _no standi_ for that comment; like, do you even know that Bella got married like four months ago?” 

Andromeda didn’t, actually. She swallows the sudden lump in her throat that wells up at the revelation, and bulldozes on. “Why is he  _here_? Why did  _he_ get disinherited? I thought he was the  _favourite_.” 

There’s a very short, extremely pregnant pause, and she feels a vicious spike of smugness when Regulus’s voice crackles back, frostier than before. “You’re mistaken; the favourite would be  _me_. And, here’s a thought: why don’t you ask  _him_ why our mother had to be restrained from  _literally setting him on fire_ , since he’s the one who’s actually slumming it on your floor?” 

Andromeda jabs  _End Call_ with more force than strictly necessary and resists the urge to heave her phone across the room. She’s seen her mother do that with plates, and she doesn’t actually have enough disposable income to spend on replacing even everyday china, let alone a mobile. 

She puts her phone down deliberately on the coffee table and tries to will away a brewing headache. 

She’s got a wedding in approximately two weeks to deal with, she’s had to take  _leave_ from her shitty research job to deal with Sirius’s appearance, and apparently her aunt Walburga has done what she’s been threatening to do for the past fifteen years and gone completely insane. 

Which, by the way, doesn’t bode too well for her family’s track record of mental (in)stability. 

She raises her head when Sirius bursts into her apartment a step ahead of Ted, beaming and effervescent. “I know how to do my own laundry, now,” he proclaims proudly, whilst Ted sags weakly against her wall. (Sirius has that effect on people.) “Are we going to subsist on instant ramen and pizza? Can we do that for a whole week? I  _never_ got to eat as much pizza as I wanted.” 

Andromeda nods tiredly, and it appears that no input is required from her, because Sirius barrels on. 

“Thank  _God_ you got cut off before I did; I wouldn’t know what to  _do_ otherwise - but now I’m  _exactly_ like you! Except without the Rock as a boyfriend - I thought Bella said  _you_  told her that he was white trash - or she  _said_ that he’s white trash. Did you not manage to get to the “ _btw he’s black_ ” part before they heard  _poor_ and kicked you out of the house?”

Ted suddenly goes very still, and Andromeda’s heart stops beating. 

“You didn’t tell your family that I’m black?” he asks her, carefully, and Sirius steps back, looking both confused and frightened. 

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Andromeda says carefully, and Ted’s expression closes up. 

“Right,” he says. “I’m too poor for them anyways.” 

“It was probably a good call,” Sirius pipes up. “Our grandpops was a Grand Dragon.” 

Ted shuts his eyes briefly. “A  _Grand Dragon_ ,” he repeats, and Sirius nods blithely. 

“Y’know. Of the KKK.” 

“I know,” Ted says, and whirls around. “I need some air. And space.” 

She doesn’t call him back, but that’s because she’s lost her voice somewhere in her chest. Sirius looks from the open door to her, then back to Ted’s retreating form. 

“Did I fuck things up?” he asks, and Andromeda sinks back into her shitty couch and drops her head into her hands. 

* * *

 

1437h -  **The wedding is off**    
1440h -  _what?_  
1442h -  **Ted and I broke up**  
1443h -  _WHAT?!_  
1444h -  _omg andy are you ok_  
1445h -  **Not really**  
1446h -  _i’m coming over with fudge_    
1447h -  **??? It’s only november**    
1447h -  **Why are you making fudge already**  
1448h -  _cravings_  
1448h -  _also in case of emergencies like this_  
1449h -  _andy ily you know right_  
1449h -  _i want you to be ok_  
1450h -  **Sirius wants fudge too**    
1451h -  _wtf is this sirius’s fault_    
1455h -  _andy?_    
1456h -  _give me twenty minutes_

* * *

 

Ted doesn’t  _technically_ break up with her, but it sure feels like it when he suggests that they  _take a break_. 

He sits her down in a Starbucks two days after Sirius lets slip that her family are pretty much the biggest racists since the Deep South in the midst of the Civil War, and tells her that he needs to rethink a couple of things pending her lack of full and frank disclosure. 

“I’m not blaming you for your family,” he tells her earnestly. “I’m hurt by the fact that you didn’t think that I was worth telling them about - and why you didn’t tell me this.” 

It’s not a big  _deal_ , Andromeda wants to say, and didn’t she cut ties with her insane family anyways? But maybe this is privilege on her part - because she’s White, Anglo-Saxon, nominally Protestant, and grew up in an obscenely wealthy household. What does she know about what it’s like struggling to make ends meet on the South Side of Chicago, walking past cop cars with hands held high and making the pursuit of education a  _religion_? 

( _You didn’t check if_ **my**   _student ID was fake,_ Andromeda remembers observing to a policeman, and the look of shame on his face was only fleeting as he handed Ted’s card back to him.) 

So she nods, because marriage is not (at least, it  _should not_ be a unilateral decision) and pushes away from the table and walks away, leaving half her gingerbread latte unfinished.

Molly comes over that afternoon with fudge and does a bang-up job of both pretending that Sirius doesn’t exist and giving him the stink-eye every time he looks in her direction. 

Andromeda can’t get over the  _unfairness_ of it all, but she doesn’t talk much and lets Molly’s candy glue her teeth together. 

She holds her head up high, keeps her shoulders level, and doesn’t cry. 

Ted texts her good night, and she doesn’t reply. 

He texts her good morning, and she hands her phone over to Sirius. He wishes Ted a great week ahead, and Ted doesn’t text her for the next four days. 

He texts her to tell her that there will be a snowstorm that day, so  _stay indoors_. 

Andromeda almost laughs at that - she already feels like she has an iceberg for a heart - she’s brittle and frozen and  _cold._ Sirius thanks Ted for his concern on her behalf, and wordlessly passes her phone back to her before spooning honey into mugs of hot tea for them both. 

She doesn’t want to  _deal_ with it. Because dealing with it would make it real. So she doesn’t. 

They huddle around her tiny kitchen table, listening to the wind picking up outside, in silence before Sirius clears his throat. 

“I’m gay,” he announces, and she rolls her eyes. 

“We’ve known that since you were in  _fourth grade_.” 

“Mom didn’t know,” he says tartly, and takes a protracted sip from his mug. 

“Is that why she tried to set you on fire?” 

Instead of replying like a  _normal_ person, Sirius rips his shirt open. Andromeda winces at the ugly, puckered cigarette burn that lies just above his heart. “Rex exaggerates.” 

“She did that when you told her?” 

His fingers slip as he does his buttons up. “She did that when she caught us.” 

“Oh.” She’d like to say that she’s surprised, or horrified, but she isn’t. That’s just how they were. That’s just how they all grew up. 

“He’s marrying someone else.” her cousin says, offhand, and if she hadn’t grown up with the exact same lessons ingrained into her marrow, she’d have missed the quaver in his hands and the clench of his jaw. 

“Oh. Before or after?” 

“Throughout. But he’s marrying her anyways.” Sirius’s eyes are hard as he stares into the depths of his mug. “They even have a fucking  _couple name_. Jily. James-Potter-and-Lily-Evans.  _Jily_.” 

Andromeda remembers James - her parents  _hated_ his with a burning passion - something about  _fucking tree-hugging liberals selling us to fucking China._  She doesn’t really remember much of Evans, but she  _does_ have an impression of a redhead in a cheap leopard-print faux-fur coat climbing out of Regulus’s window the Christmas before she got disowned. She hadn’t been wearing underwear. 

She doesn’t know what to say, so she settles for: “Seems like everyone’s getting married.”

Sirius darts a glance up at her, and she recognises that look, dark and poisonous. “Except for you.”

“Don’t,” she whispers, and presses her fingers into the warmth of her mug. Her knuckles are white around the chunky porcelain, stretched tight over her bones. “There’s no need to be cruel. I’m not Bella, or your mother.” 

There’s a charged silence before he abandons his seat noisily and throws himself at her feet, burying his face in her abdomen. “I’m sorry,” he says, and she believes him. “I don’t know why I say things like that. I don’t know.” 

Andromeda knows why, but she says nothing. Who’s to say that it won’t surface in her? She runs her hands through his hair and rubs his back like she did when they were children and his mother had beaten him so badly that he hadn’t been able to walk for a week. 

“I never liked James Potter,” she says loyally, like she can’t feel the tears soaking through her t-shirt. 

“That’s a shame,” Sirius finally replies, words muffled and thick. “There’s a lot about him to like.”

She purses her lips and stares out of the window at the snow. 

Eventually, Sirius raises his head, and something in her breaks as she swipes a thumb over his cheekbones, chasing away salt water like his mother should have done when her son’s heart had broken. 

“People are stupid,” he murmurs. “Don’t let them be stupid and ruin your life.” 

He looks meaningfully at her phone until the effect is ruined by a hiccup. 

* * *

 

1041h -  **Molly I need you to be at City Hall in two hours**  
1042h -  _????? IS IT_  
1042h -  **Just had breakfast with Ted**  
1042h -  **We’re back on**  
1042h -  **And getting married NOW**    
1043h -  _??????????? WHAT HAPPENED_  
1044h -  **I told him that he was a fucking idiot**    
1045h -  **And that I can’t help it that my family is fucking crazy**  
1045h -  **And that I’d left them because I fucking love HIM**  
1046h -  **And that I wasn’t fucking ashamed of him when I didn’t tell my family about him being black**    
1047h -  **TBH I think that they’d still be more bothered about the lack of money than they would be about his race**    
1048h -  _so_  
1048h -  **So I said that he was wasting our time**  
1049h -  **And then he agreed that he was fucking stupid and said let’s get married now then**    
1050h -  _this is pretty fast considering that you’ve barely spoken for the past 2 weeks_    
1051h -  **We dated all throughout college**  
1051h -  **Also I left behind a multi-million dollar inheritance and my own island in Greece to be with this man**    
1052h -  _yes but still_  
1052h -  _are you sure?_    
1052h -  _does he deserve you?_    
1053h -  **Ted is the best thing that ever happened to me**  
1053h -  **And I intend on reminding him every time he fucking forgets it**    
1054h -  _ok_  
1054h -  _i’ve got your back andy_  
1054h -  _so if you’re good then i’m good_  
1055h -  _do you need me to bring arthur as your second witness_  
1055h -  **Nah Sirius is my other one**  
1056h -  _um_    
1056h -  **He’s fine, Molly**    
1057h - _ok then.................._  
1057h -  _i’m still reeling btw can you tell_    
1058h -  **Yes**  
1059h -  **Stop reeling I know what I’m doing**    
1100h -  **This is the rest of my life**  
1101h -  **I choose this**    
1102h -  _ok_  
1103h -  _ily andy_  
1103h -  **I love you too, Molls**    
1107h -  _so an island huh_  
1108h -  **It’s more of a rock, really**

 


End file.
